


Ice Cream Castles

by lilithenaltum



Series: Lilithenaltum's Tony Stark Bingo Collection [1]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Insomniac Tony Stark, IronPrincess, MechaSiblings, Mentions of Steve Rogers - Freeform, Not Canon Compliant, Past Relationship(s), Post-Endgame, Sad and Sweet, Survivor Guilt, Tony Stark Bingo, Tony Stark Bingo 2019, mentions of Bucky Barnes - Freeform, mentions of nebula - Freeform, past Bucky/Shuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 11:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17786255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithenaltum/pseuds/lilithenaltum
Summary: “Tony,” Shuri says in a half whisper and everything but the neon light and her gorgeous face disappears into the background.His skin burns pleasantly where she’s still touching him and she keeps going, mouth parted and eyes heavy. He turns his palm over so that she grasps it, first hesitantly, then tighter, until he’s holding her hand on the table of a booth in Queens, eating ice cream at nearly four am.“He didn’t deserve you,” Tony says with a vicious edge to his voice. Neither of them did, really....Written for Round 2 of the Tony Stark Bingo, 2019.Square: K2-Holding Hands





	Ice Cream Castles

 

He’s never been a heavy sleeper but after Thanos, the insomnia gets so much worse.

 

Days pass sometimes before he gets a wink in, and even those rare moments of rest are interrupted by nightmares and a crushing, aching loneliness that made it impossible to feel anything but exhausted. He went through his days in a bleary motion of action, working in the lab on and off for something to do that occupied his mind when he wasn’t loading his schedule down with conferences and meetings. How he hadn’t passed out in a heap by now, he wasn’t sure, except maybe whatever he’d flown through in what was supposed to be the last ten minutes of his life had done things to his body in order to keep it sustained for days and days more. Whatever that cloud had done hadn’t been near enough for his mind, however. He felt oddly bitter about surviving, though he didn’t quite understand why.

 

Nebula had said she understood, but couldn’t explain it either, and he was in no mood for therapy. That could wait, just like everything else could.

 

Per his usual, he’s awake at two am and he’s sick of Netflix, tired of Hulu, and exhausted on petty social media. There aren’t anymore books he wants to read and nothing he’d like to work on or create. He doesn’t want to do much of anything anymore, he finds, except get through the day and sink into the bed and stare at the hazy, monochrome shapes on the wall of his new penthouse. This place didn’t feel like home, but not much felt like home after the break up.

 

He wasn’t sure if he could even call it a break up. It had been a quiet “conscious uncoupling”, or, that’s what Pepper had told the papers. He hadn’t said anything, because there wasn’t anything to say. And in the three years since, he’d avoided everything and everyone except Rhodey and Happy and on occasion, Natasha. He didn’t care for company anymore and didn’t want to surround himself with people who pretended they cared when all they really wanted was someone to pity. So he stayed in the house. It didn’t feel like home, but it was a sanctuary all the same.

 

It was a surprise, then, that he found himself putting on jeans and a tee and meandered around his bedroom looking for his boots. New York never slept and maybe, just maybe, there was something out there he could do that would clear his mind of all the useless, painful clutter that clogged it. Maybe he could exhaust himself enough to fall asleep and not wake up for a week. Maybe he’d just grab some ice cream and people watch for a while. Anything sounded better than sitting in bed and doing nothing.

 

Springtime in the city was his favorite time of year, though he’d never given it much thought before. And any time after midnight was fine, because though the heart of the city still thumped like a bass drum, the air was different and the lights shone brighter, and Tony found himself living for the night time, when the hustle and bustle outside his window was just…different. It was odd, and soothing, and surprisingly serene even in its wildness. Weird things happened that late at night. Tony considered himself an oddity now, and so he mingled on the dirty streets with the rest of the sleepless as if he actually belonged somewhere now.

 

He takes an uber out of the Upper East Side and into the boroughs, because it’s easier to hide there. At first, it’s once a week, then every few nights, until every other night he’s wandering around in Harlem and Brooklyn and if he’s feeling really out of place, Long Island. He does this for a while, at least most of the season. He never talks to anyone except the lone clerk in the bodega on the corner in the Bronx, or the girl at the 24-hour ice cream parlor in Queens. She’s his favorite because she seems to understand. There’s a strange sadness in her eyes he finds comforting and when she hands him his double scoop of chocolate chunk, he feels like she gets where he’s coming from.

 

She never bothers him. She never speaks, outside of a thank you and telling him what his total is. She just sits in the corner with a comic and lets him eat his ice cream in silence under a neon sign that blinks out of rhythm.

 

By the summer, he’s established a pattern so that though the girl at the diner switches shifts, he’s granted with the same courtesy as before. The boy that takes her place is still in college, with a freshness to him that should be jarring, but it’s welcoming. He, too, seems to understand Tony’s need for silence and space and the little booth by the neon sign. He curls up in the back room and tells Tony to only call if he wants another scoop or if the place is on fire. Tony catches him napping a few times but never tells; he wakes him gently and gives him a nod before it’s back into the night and into the quickly sweltering city.

.

.

.

.

And then one night, he bumps into someone else.

 

She’s still as slender as a reed and pretty as a picture, all glowing, glossy dark skin and big brown eyes. But there’s flint in those eyes, and a strange sort of bitterness festering there that he hates to see. He doesn’t find comfort in how she glances up at him, completely surprised, probably, but trying hard to appear unaffected.

 

They’d bumped heads a lot when he’d crash landed in Wakanda and even more after they worked out how to bring everyone back from the dead. But he’d always found her intriguing and admired her tenacity, her sweetness, her innocence.

 

He hopes to god it’s not been lost.

 

“Stark,” she greets, first, because he’s too dumbstruck to even see her to say anything. She eyes him like he has no business being here at three in the morning, but then again, neither does she. She doesn’t even have any real reason to be in New York. There’s nothing going on, not that he knows of, unless she’s doing another tour in the universities, but he’d have heard about that.

 

It wasn’t stalking if you kept up on what a former teammate was doing, right?

 

“Princess,” he intones, because that’s what he’d always called her. Occasionally, when she’d really push his buttons, he included a sarcastic, smarmy ‘your majesty’ but she wasn’t Queen anymore and she wasn’t giving him any reason to be a smart ass. He’s still surprised when the corner of her mouth quirks up, almost as if she wants to smile but isn’t quite ready to.

 

Or maybe she can’t. Maybe it takes too much to smile.

 

He’s satisfied with a half smirk, though. He can feel his body loosen and his face soften just watching her watch him, the way it always had, even when she riled him up so hot, he had to take a two mile hike into the markets around the palace to cool off. That’s where he’d found that gorgeous necklace he’d gotten Pepper. She’d left it in the bathroom when she moved out.

 

Shuri tilts her head, braids splaying across her shoulders and she hums in her throat as if she’s considering something.

 

“What’s the best kind of ice cream here?” She darts her eyes around the little shop and over to the yawning clerk, who glances to Tony with a shrug of his shoulders.

 

“I only ever get chocolate chunk,” he tells her, because he’s been terrified of anything different. Chocolate is good, chocolate is reliable. It comes from a bean, too, so technically, that makes it healthy.

 

“Rocky road?”

 

He shrugs and leans forward toward the glass encased freezer. “No idea, though you really can’t go wrong with rocky road.”

 

“Yes, you can,” she retorts. “The marshmallows could be inferior, the cream itself could be gritty. Not to say of how stale the nuts could be.” She sniffs daintily, shoulders held back and head high as if she were sitting on that big throne back in Wakanda, regarding him the way she had when he and Nebula had come limping into the palace. It was the first time he’d ever seen her, and he’d been struck on the spot, though he did a decent job of playing it off.

 

 

> _“I thought you were betrothed,” Nebula had said in that monotone she used when she didn’t have time to listen to any bullshit. It was one of his favorite things about her._
> 
> _"I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he’d grumbled back, because at the time, he hadn’t._

 

Tony sucks in air and finds he wants to laugh for the first time in a very long time. At the very least, three years, though he feels as though he’s never laughed ever in his life.

 

“You can always ask for a sample, you know.”

 

“Actually,” she says, her smirk gone from half to full, “I _didn’t_ know that.” She turns her head elegantly and her entire expression changes, so that the clerk behind the freezer is blushing and stammering in an effort to please her. Tony doesn’t understand how she does what she does, but he’s seen it in action and it’s a marvel. He wonders if that’s a class in the royal curriculum-how to win friends and influence others.

 

“May I try a bit of your rocky road, please?” she asks, and he actually does laugh this time at the lilt of her voice. “A tiny scoop, and maybe a bit of water, too?”

 

The clerk goes about granting her wish and Shuri settles back on her heels, watching the boy scoop a chunk of ice cream from the tub and into a sample cup. And Tony takes the moment to observe her.

 

He’d been a bit wrong in his assessment. She’s not quite as slender as she had been, probably due to childbirth, but she’s still a stunner and even lovelier than he remembered. He lets his eyes dart between the tops of her sandaled feet to her belly, wondering for a moment if there were stretch marks from having her son or if she’d rubbed enough cocoa butter on her skin to keep them away.

 

It’s an odd thought, but he’s thought weirder things, so he doesn’t dwell on it. When he finds her face again, her jaw is clenched and her eyes narrow and he knows she can feel him watching her.

 

Good. Let her feel it, then. She’d done entirely too much watching of him during those sleepless nights in her lab. It felt good to repay the favor. But she doesn’t speak a word about his observation, and the clerk calls her over for her sample.

 

Shuri takes her cup with a smile, then turns to him and raises the spoon in her hand.

 

“If this isn’t any good, I’m blaming you.”

 

“Why does everyone want to blame me for everything?” he asks with a snort, and she pops the ice cream onto her tongue, eyes fixed on his the entire time she assesses it.

 

“It’s not bad,” she finally says. He doesn’t know why he lets out a breath in relief. “It could be better, but then again, so could everything else.”

 

“No, you’re just a picky little brat,” he grumbles and she presses her lips tight to keep from laughing. He wants to make her laugh. He hasn’t in a long time, but he hasn’t seen in her just as long, either.

 

“I’m not picky. I just know my ice cream.” She hands the empty cup and the half finished water to the clerk and then asks for another sample, this time, birthday cake with mochi topping.

 

And she watches him again as he works, her shoulder pressed against Tony’s and her arms folded, though she seems more relaxed. He works up the courage to ask her how she’s been, how things have been going, and she sighs.

 

“How’s your son?”

 

“Growing,” she says after a pause that tells him she’s thinking of everything that’s happened since the boy was born-the consequences of birthing a child with an American man while being decidedly unmarried. “He’s healthy. Happy. Beautiful. He’s at the hotel with his nannies and his grandmother because some people can sleep.” Shuri’s chuckle is mirthless. “I am not one of those people.”

 

“Shit, me either, sweetheart.”

 

The clerk hands Shuri her new sample and this time she hums in approval.

 

“This is good. This is _really_ good.” She dips a bit onto her spoon and holds it out to him, right at the level of his mouth, though he still has to dip down to eat it if he were to humor her.

 

But of course, he humors her.

 

He moves slow, as if he’s underwater, taking the spoon into his mouth with a rush of breath that wisps across her fingers and makes her blink, hard. Shuri holds the spoon steady and when he pulls back, birthday cake with mochi on his tongue, she palms the utensil into her hand and puts it in her pocket and keep it instead of tossing it in the trash.

 

“Yeah,” he says with a shudder, because her fingertips had brushed his lips and that’s the first time anyone’s touched him outside of a handshake in three years. “That’s fuckin’ good.” She bites her lip at the expletive but doesn’t respond, except to tell the clerk to hand her two scoops of that, extra mochi…and perhaps an extra spoon, too.

 

.

.

.

.

 

“He looks like him,” she says, halfway down her cup of ice cream, the blue neon reflecting off her skin beautifully. She looks like an angel in this light, like some sort of ethereal supernatural being. He’s always thought her beautiful, but talking about her baby boy at three thirty a.m. on a July night made her even more so.

 

“Yeah? He’s still got the Rogers pout, huh?”

 

Shuri smiles in spite of the bitter outcome of having a baby no one wanted her to have. _Rest in Peace, Captain America. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest._

“It’s his signature expression, especially when he doesn’t get his way.”

 

“I can’t imagine he got that from Steve, though,” Tony comments, because Steve was a lot of things, but spoiled, he was most definitely not.

 

“Nope,” she replies with a little laugh. “He got that from his mother.” She taps her fingernails against the cheap table in their booth and shrugs. “Got my temper and my impetuousness. He got both of our insatiable curiosity. But he got his father’s smile and his pout and his kindness, too.”

 

“Told you that kid was gonna be his twin,” Tony says softly. And she’d ranted and raved about that, insisting the baby would probably look like her so, no, it wouldn’t matter to Bucky and no, she hadn’t asked him for his opinion. Tony hated being right sometimes.

 

“Yes. You did.” Her smile turns bitter. “Probably why Bucky left.”

 

“Barnes left because he was a butthurt little jerk who didn’t understand that sometimes, people change.” That’s why Pepper had left. It was a sore spot, still, and all the more so where Shuri was involved.

 

Shuri’s eyes widen at how harsh his tone is but once she realizes it’s not for her, but in defense of her, they dart down to her hands and hold steady for a long, silent minute.

 

And then she reaches out, to where his own hand still clenches his plastic spoon of birthday cake ice cream and mochi topping. She’s a millimeter away from touching him and he holds his breath, his skin going hot, then cold, when her fingertips graze just the tops of his knuckles. Little electric shocks spark from the point of contact upward to his elbow and shoulder. He thinks she feels it too.

 

And when he gasps, shuddering as he does so, a rollercoaster starts in his belly because no one has touched him in so long that he’s forgotten how much he likes it and needs it and craves it. He’s starving. She’s dangling a snack in front of him that he’s too afraid to reach out and grab.

 

“Tony,” she says in a half whisper and everything but the neon light and her gorgeous face disappears into the background. His skin burns pleasantly where she’s still touching him and she keeps going, mouth parted and eyes heavy. He turns his palm over so that she grasps it, first hesitantly, then tighter, until he’s holding her hand on the table of a booth in Queens, eating ice cream at nearly four am.

 

“He didn’t deserve you,” Tony says with a vicious edge to his voice. Neither of them did, really, though maybe Steve would have if he'd been less a coward and hadn’t pushed her away for her own honor. But Steve had died and gone to his grave only just finding out he was to be a father and Tony had vowed to himself that he’d do whatever he could in any kind of way to protect Steve Rogers’ son the way he couldn't protect Steve himself.

 

He’d sworn he’d protect Shuri, too, but she’d cut ties after the fight and he thought that maybe that was for the best.

 

“He deserved better,” she says, tears brimming in her big brown eyes. “I hope he’s found it.”

 

“Barnes doesn’t talk to you?”

 

She shakes her head but doesn’t move her hand and for that, he’s exceptionally grateful. He feels like his entire life the last three years has been a swim through mud. He’s finally finding clear waters.

 

“He avoids me, if he can. He comes in from missions with Sam and of course, Sam speaks. He hugs Christopher and hugs me, but Bucky…” She sighs and rolls eyes, suddenly annoyed by the entire situation. That’s better than her crying. He can’t handle seeing her cry the way she had when she’d found out she was pregnant.

 

 

> _“It wasn’t an affair, Tony Stark,” she’d said violently, pale as morning sickness wracked her small body. “Just one night, and-“_
> 
> _“That’s all it takes, sweetheart,” Tony had said, sad and a little jealous too, but mostly angry that he couldn’t protect her from something like this. “Just one night.”_

 

“They say he’s got someone else, so…I guess I have to be happy for him.”

 

“You don’t have to be.” His grin is saltier than her tears and he fights back ones of his own. “I’m not happy Pepper’s found someone else. I’m _never_ gonna be happy about that.”

 

“She didn’t deserve you either,” Shuri says, and he wishes he believed her. Truth was, Pepper definitely deserved better…and he knew she had found it.

 

He doesn’t respond. He takes another scoop of his mostly melted ice cream and sighs around the spoonful as Shuri’s hand rests in his, her thumb pressing against his pulse and her eyes knitting together tiny little shards in the pit of his chest.

 

.

.

.

.

It’s cool outside when they leave the shop, a dewy, misty coolness that only hovers for an hour or so and right before the sunrise.

 

“How long will you be in town?”

 

“At least a week,” she says, picking at her shirt with her free hand. Her other holds his again, as they walk down the street in the quiet of the early morning toward the corner where they’ll meet the uber. She wants to watch the sunrise, so he offers to take her to Brooklyn before the dawn where they can sit under the bridge and see the sky explode in pinks and reds and soft baby blues.

 

“Got any plans other than sightseeing?”

 

She laughs and shakes her head, and for the first time, laughter doesn’t make him feel like someone on the outside looking in.

 

“I hadn’t planned on doing anything. Mama wants to shop. I wanted to bring Christopher to see his Baba’s grave.” She turns to him with wide, hopeful eyes, and the urge to hold her close and keep her safe overwhelms him so that the words rush out before he can stop them. But why should he stop them? If she wants him-if she’ll have him-he’ll be hers.

 

“Need a tagalong?”

 

Her smile is both grateful and touched and when she leans up to press a kiss to his scruffy jaw, his heart beats so hard he thinks it’ll break out his chest.

 

“I’d appreciate one. I haven’t seen the plot…they say there’s a monument and I’m not…” She sucks in air, steadies herself, tries again. “I did love him, in a way. Not the way he wanted, but I did.”

 

“Yeah. Me too. He wouldn’t believe that if he were here for me to say so, I don’t think, but…”

 

She looks to him as if she holds some sort of secret he isn’t privy to. It’s almost like seeing the Shuri he’d met after weeks of hunger and near death in outer space. He finds a little bit of beauty even in those memories.

 

“He would. I think he knew.” She stalls for a second on the street and her hand squeezes his tighter, and when she speaks again, he starts to believe that perhaps there was a reason he didn’t die up there in that ship. He thinks there’s a reason the cloud found him and Nebula, and that he’d ended up at Shuri's doorstep instead of anywhere else on earth.

 

“He knew I loved you, too,” she whispers. “I think he understood. That’s why he was okay with…” She swallows again, pushing back tears futilely. She cries anyway, and Tony lets himself cry with her. It’s a soft trickle because he knows if he truly lets the tears come, they’ll probably never stop.

 

 

> _“I still think it should have been you,” Nebula had said when they left Wakanda the last time, her face as sad as it possibly could be for someone who rarely allowed herself to be. “She should have chosen you, Tony.”_
> 
> _“Maybe,” he’d said, brokenhearted and alone and feeling foreign in his own skin._

 

Or maybe she _had_ chosen him after all. Maybe it just took three years before they could do anything about it. Maybe time and fate and the alignment in the stars decided all of this for them and they were unwitting players in a big game of chess. He didn’t know anymore. He just knew that somehow, their paths crossed again and for that, he was grateful.

 

An hour later, the sun rises over Brooklyn, and Shuri still holds his hand.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm over on tumblr | lilithenaltum


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